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Deeplinks Blog

Deeplinks Blog

A Slashdotter, commenting on Endangered Gizmos and the growing threat to harmless "Me2Me" uses: At this point, I've accepted that there are things I do that may someday be considered a crime. ...: Record TV shows from my DirecTV reciever that I pay a monthly subscription fee...

James Madison understood that "a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy or perhaps both." Legal protections for media sources and unpublished information are critical means for journalists of all stripes to acquire information and communicate it...

Requires "Sunshine" in Process of Choosing E-voting Machines Texas - A Texas court ruled today that state voting examiners may no longer bar the public from their meetings. In the case, ACLU of Texas v. Connor, the plaintiffs argued that the Texas Open Meetings Act should apply to meetings...

J.D. Lasica has written a scorching Reason article criticizing Michael Powell's "invisible legacy" -- the broadcast flag technology mandate. Snippet (emphasis and hyperlink, mine): In telecom policy, Powell lived up to his deregulation rhetoric. But there's another legacy Powell is bequeathing us, one that has been scarcely...

EFF has represented StreamCast from the beginning of the MGM v. Grokster case. Why? Because from the beginning, this case has been about the entertainment industry's effort to re-fight its war against the Betamax VCR. The stakes are high: the legal rules laid out in the 1984 Supreme...

EFF today unveiled a new campaign to enlist your help in the fight to protect the environment for innovation: FCC Chairman Michael Powell calls TiVo "God's machine," and its devotees have been known to declare, "You can take my TiVo when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers!...

Project Demonstrates How Bad Law Ruins the Environment for Innovation San Francisco - A new project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) highlights the way misguided laws and lawsuits can pollute the environment for technological innovation. "Endangered Gizmos" is a natural history of technologies from the Betamax VCR to...

Now that the dust has settled on the majority of the close elections nationwide, we can see more clearly than ever the most disturbing problem caused by using paperless touchscreen voting machines: the recounts were, to put it bluntly, a charade. The goal of a recount is to ensure that...

Washington, DC - The US Supreme Court set the date for the oral argument in MGM v. Grokster for March 29, 2005, in Washington, DC. EFF is defending StreamCast Networks, the company behind the Morpheus peer-to-peer (P2P) software, against 28 of the world's largest entertainment companies. The companies first...

Our own Ren Bucholzmakes the case this week in the San Francisco Bay Guardian that 2005 will be the Year of Filesharing Legally. Or rather, the year that drives home the benefit of making it so -- especially in light of the fact despite 7,000 + recording...

Kevin Murray is fast becoming the Orrin Hatch of the California Senate. On the heels of criminalizing half the teenagers in the state for sharing music with their friends, Murray is training his crosshairs on the California technology industry. The tech threat comes in the form of...

Civil rights leader Lawrence Guyot, quoted over at Daily Kos: "I would call upon everyone who has access to 'Eyes on the Prize' to openly violate any and all laws regarding its showing." The backstory is chronicled here; also apropos is Daniel Love's Powerful Pictures, the video...

No reason. As the Washington Post reports, you can use pocket-lining tricks like region-coding for all kinds of "content" -- including printer cartridges: H-P has quietly begun implementing "region coding" for its highly lucrative print cartridges for some of its newest printers sold in Europe. Try putting a printer...

Not long ago, we were bemoaning the malign use Apple and Real Networks are making of digital rights management (DRM) -- in short, abusing legitimate customers in the service of marking territory. Unfortunately, that's far from the worst of it. As we point out in "Unintended Consequences: Five...